Governor Rick Perry's version of the satanic verses!

On "All Things Considered," Professor Noah Feldman remarked in the context of the rioting and violence against the video that has now morphed into anti-American rage:

We've tended to be extremely permissive, and that does make us very different from other countries. It's actually a problem when people elsewhere actually think, including reasonable people, that the United States government must be complicit in something like the anti-Muslim film because we haven't prohibited it.

I wish he and many others would repeat that as often as they can.  The distinction is huge: in the US, the free rights we have are not because the US government has not prohibited them, but because the Constitution has made sure we will have those rights.  These rights are not granted to us by the government for it to take them away, but these are our inalienable rights.  We voluntarily empower the government.

Such an understanding of rights might be, understandably, incomprehensible in societies where a dictator, or an authoritarian government, might decide what is permissible and what is not.  Similar to the old joke about the USSR: whatever was not banned was prohibited!  (Though, of course, the recent Pussy Riot controversy makes it clear that rights are severely constrained in Putin's Russia.)

Thus, with every act of free speech, especially the (ir)religious ones, that offend somebody somewhere else, the suspicion that the US government is in on it deepens.  That this offensive speech is somehow state-certified.

Making things worse are the maniacal arguments that this country was founded as a Christian nation and that the ills are because we have moved away from religion in government.  It is not difficult to imagine that already enraged people in Pakistan or Libya would get even more pissed off when they come to know that Governor Rick Perry said this even as the anti-American violence was escalating in many countries:

“Satan runs across the world with his doubt and with his untruths and what have you and one of the untruths out there that is driven is that people of faith should not be involved in the public arena,” Perry said during the call on Tuesday, organized by the Rev. Rick Scarborough.
Perry said the separation of religious and civic institutions in the U.S. began with a “narrative” that first took root in the 1960s.
“Somehow or another there’s this, ya know, steel wall, this iron curtain or whatever you want to call it between the church and people of faith and this separation of church and state is just false on its face,” the governor said. “We have a biblical responsibility to be involved in the public arena proclaiming God’s truth.”

Satan causing the separation of church and state? God's truth in the public space?  The only good thing here is that Perry is not the GOP's presidential candidate!

Quite a few years ago, Bernard Lewis wrote that the fundamentalist Islam didn't worry much about the godless USSR but, in fact, gladly embraced the Soviet Union as a check against the US. Quite a contradiction it seems like at the surface, but there is a deep reason: the fundamentalists were confident that their people won't get swayed by the godless commies.  The US is viewed as threat because from its founding, it continues to be a symbol and a real driver of  the two profound changes that have characterized recent history:

Ultimately, the struggle of the fundamentalists is against two enemies, secularism and modernism. The war against secularism is conscious and explicit, and there is by now a whole literature denouncing secularism as an evil neo-pagan force in the modern world and attributing it variously to the Jews, the West, and the United States. The war against modernity is for the most part neither conscious nor explicit, and is directed against the whole process of change that has taken place in the Islamic world in the past century or more and has transformed the political, economic, social, and even cultural structures of Muslim countries. Islamic fundamentalism has given an aim and a form to the otherwise aimless and formless resentment and anger of the Muslim masses at the forces that have devalued their traditional values and loyalties and, in the final analysis, robbed them of their beliefs, their aspirations, their dignity, and to an increasing extent even their livelihood.
There is something in the religious culture of Islam which inspired, in even the humblest peasant or peddler, a dignity and a courtesy toward others never exceeded and rarely equalled in other civilizations. And yet, in moments of upheaval and disruption, when the deeper passions are stirred, this dignity and courtesy toward others can give way to an explosive mixture of rage and hatred which impels even the government of an ancient and civilized country—even the spokesman of a great spiritual and ethical religion—to espouse kidnapping and assassination, and try to find, in the life of their Prophet, approval and indeed precedent for such actions.

If not convinced yet that it this struggle that fuels that rage against the US, Lewis explained:

The instinct of the masses is not false in locating the ultimate source of these cataclysmic changes in the West and in attributing the disruption of their old way of life to the impact of Western domination, Western influence, or Western precept and example. And since the United States is the legitimate heir of European civilization and the recognized and unchallenged leader of the West, the United States has inherited the resulting grievances and become the focus for the pent-up hate and anger.

Governor Perry, and all those folks who think that the separation of church and state is satanic are then clearly attempting to make this struggle in the Islamic world a modern day version of the crusades!  If only somebody could force them to read the following concluding points from Lewis:

To this end we must strive to achieve a better appreciation of other religious and political cultures, through the study of their history, their literature, and their achievements. At the same time, we may hope that they will try to achieve a better understanding of ours, and especially that they will understand and respect, even if they do not choose to adopt for themselves, our Western perception of the proper relationship between religion and politics. To describe this perception I shall end as I began, with a quotation from an American President, this time not the justly celebrated Thomas Jefferson but the somewhat unjustly neglected John Tyler, who, in a letter dated July 10, 1843, gave eloquent and indeed prophetic expression to the principle of religious freedom:

The United States have adventured upon a great and noble experiment, which is believed to have been hazarded in the absence of all previous precedent—that of total separation of Church and State. No religious establishment by law exists among us. The conscience is left free from all restraint and each is permitted to worship his Maker after his own judgement. The offices of the Government are open alike to all. No tithes are levied to support an established Hierarchy, nor is the fallible judgement of man set up as the sure and infallible creed of faith. The Mahommedan, if he will to come among us would have the privilege guaranteed to him by the constitution to worship according to the Koran; and the East Indian might erect a shrine to Brahma if it so pleased him. Such is the spirit of toleration inculcated by our political Institutions.... The Hebrew persecuted and down trodden in other regions takes up his abode among us with none to make him afraid.... and the Aegis of the Government is over him to defend and protect him. Such is the great experiment which we have tried, and such are the happy fruits which have resulted from it; our system of free government would be imperfect without it.

The body may be oppressed and manacled and yet survive; but if the mind of man be fettered, its energies and faculties perish, and what remains is of the earth, earthly. Mind should be free as the light or as the air.

 It is a shame that from the likes of Jefferson and Tyler we have come down to the likes of Perry!

Remember the Kerala professor whose arm was chopped off?

It was two years ago that extremists, in the name of defending their religion, chopped off the arm of a college professor in Kerala.  In front of his family. 

As if this wasn't enough, his employer soon fired him from his teaching job.

Whatever happened to him since then?

Two years after his right palm was chopped off by alleged activists of the Popular Front of India (PFI), T.J. Joseph, former professor of Newman College, Thodupuzha, is still battling physical disability.
The palm that was stitched back, his left hand and left leg still give him a great deal of pain and discomfort.

All these mean that he has been forced to learn to live a new life:

“I learned to write with the left hand and I still struggle with the fingers in the right hand as I can’t fold them. I also can’t fold the little finger in my left hand. I can’t walk properly as I had multiple fractures on the left leg as well,” he said.

How terrible!

I am certain that I do not have even the tiniest percentage of the perseverance and determination that Joseph has.

Writhing in pain, T J Joseph is writing a book with his left hand, two years after that fateful Sunday.
In between, life taught some bitter lessons to Joseph who taught Malayalam language and literature for hundreds of students over the years.
 But he is on a positive note.
 “There is a cause for every action. I am writing the book to tell the world that don’t ever give up,” he reveals his intention behind the endeavour.
Writing is not an easy affair for Joseph as his right hand is yet to regain its strength after the attack while his family considers July 4 as his day of resurrection.
The book would narrate his life in exile after a case against him, the attack, the painful hospital days and his vision about life.
 He expects to complete the book in a year’s time.

So, were the brutal attackers tried and sentenced to time in prison?  Did the college realize its idiocy in firing him? 

No and No :(

The National Investigation Agency (NIA) which conducted the probe is yet to file the final chargesheet.
The case Joseph filed against the college management is before the University Appellate Tribunal in Thiruvananthapuram. “I have two more years of service and I hope I will be reinstated as I have done nothing wrong,” he said.

A tragic irony that all these happened in Kerala, which is often hailed as a progressive state!  To put it differently, if such things can happen in a "progressive" Kerala, then one has to wonder how much worse things might be in Bihar or Orissa--more than whatever is reported, that is!

Pakistan needs a lot more Veena Maliks!

From the Spectator 

we are going to need many more like the Pakistani actress Veena Malik. Watch her take on a mullah, who is trying to accuse her of immoral behaviour. This is no small accusation in Pakistan where Islamist death squads and their collaborators in the state intelligence service, operate at will. The talk show setting of the attempt at trial by media is commonplace too. The murder of Salman Taseer followed days of hacks whipping up “Muslim rage” against him.
Instead of being frightened, Malik turns on her accuser and the journalist, who helped set her up, and lets them have it.
Brave, beautiful and utterly magnificent.

Yes, it is one powerful video that MEMRI has made available with English subtitles.  Hey, this is a must watch video.



Secular Right, where I came across this, notes:

So long as there continue to be people in traditionally Muslim countries with the courage to speak out against bullying clerics and the rising tide of retrograde and brutal religious intolerance there are, I think, still some grounds for some hope. 

Yes, indeed.

I didn't know anything about Veena Malik until now.   Slate notes:

Malik is a Pakistani actress who appeared on the Indian reality show Big Boss 4. Like Sheen and Brown, she’s a celebrity with a lot of anger. Unlike those miscreants, her anger is just and well-placed. Since her return to Pakistan, Malik has faced death threats for “humiliating Islam” and faced harsh criticism from conservative mullahs. Fortunately, she’s not running and hiding. She appeared on a show called Express News TV (think The O’Reilly Factor, only not as polite) in late January and first dismissed the question from the host asking whether her appearance on the show—as well as her “dresses and action—was an affront to the “ideological foundations of Paksitan.”

India's NDTV reports on this:

"Maulvis sexually assault children in madrassahs under their care. People are burnt alive in Pakistan. Corruption is rampant. Women are gang-raped and there is extremism everywhere and yet no one talks about these evils but everyone is concerned about me what Veena Malik did," she said.

Malik broke down when the host of the show called her "Begairat" (shameless) and she shot back at him.

"Who are you pass such indecent remarks about me who gave you this right," she questioned.

The criticism on Malik comes at a time when the country is facing a clear divide over the blasphemy law and religious fundamentalism appears to be spreading and where the liberals and moderates are afraid to express their views.

Read more at: http://movies.ndtv.com/movie_story.aspx?id=ENTEN20110167602&keyword=television§ion=Movies&subcatg=MOVIESINDIA&cp

But, for various reasons, including romance, it appears that Veena Malik will be in India, and not in Pakistan, for quite a while.

And you thought Auburn's Alabama was better than Oregon!

The following is a letter that was published in The Statesman Journal, the newspaper from Oregon's capital, Salem:

Kitzhaber must stop adulterous lifestyle
News that the governor has been living what I consider an adulterous life hurts, because voters hoped for a person who would lead Oregon to higher ethics.
History has long proved that nations with low ethics soon collapse, and is showing in our country.
Either the governor and his girlfriend get honorably married or people must recall him from office. Already people are noticing how nature is showing signs of distress by damaging storms. What is real?
God's laws still apply, even to top-level officials. They should look inside those Bibles they put their hands on and put those words into action again.
— Joe Spenner, Stayton

I had no idea that weather patterns can be affected by any governor's lifestyle.  Things we find out everyday, eh!

Lunatics running the asylum that Pakistan has become

What a ghastly story of an assassination it was when Salman Taseer was killed by his own bodyguard, all because Taseer had advocated for clemency for a woman who expressed her thoughts, and happened to be a Christian.  The killer is now being celebrated by ignorant fundamentalists, who have increased their ever tightening grip on the political arteries:

The funeral of his victim was sparsely attended: a couple of thousand mourners at most. A frightened President Zardari and numerous other politicians didn’t show up. A group of mullahs had declared that anyone attending the funeral would be regarded as guilty of blasphemy. No mullah (that includes those on the state payroll) was prepared to lead the funeral prayers. The federal minister for the interior, Rehman Malik, a creature of Zardari’s, has declared that anyone trying to tamper with or amend the blasphemy laws will be dealt with severely. In the New York Times version he said he would shoot any blasphemer himself.

Tariq Ali, while reminiscing fond memories of Taseer, warns about the increasingly loud chants within Pakistan that clamor for a military coup, yet again.  Everything is going the wrong way for this country, which seems to have been cursed at birth. The decade-long US presence in Afghanistan is further precipitating the internal crisis:

Take the Af-Pak war. Few now would dispute that its escalation has further destabilised Pakistan, increasing the flow of recruits to suicide bomber command. The CIA’s New Year message to Pakistan consisted of three drone attacks in North Waziristan, killing 19 people. There were 116 drone strikes in 2010, double the number ordered in the first year of the Obama presidency. Serious Pakistani newspapers, Dawn and the News, claim that 98 per cent of those killed in the strikes over the last five years – the number of deaths is estimated to be between two and three thousand – were civilians, a percentage endorsed by David Kilcullen, a former senior adviser to General Petraeus. The Brookings Institution gives a grim ratio of one militant killed for every ten civilians. The drones are operated by the CIA, which isn’t subject to military rules of engagement

What a mess!  I wonder how this story will end--will the lunatics win, or will we be able to take control?

Stoned Pakistan and harsh punishments

The graphic says it all (ht):

Pakistan's spiraling descent

Reacting to the brazen assassination of Salman Taseer, the governor of Pakistan's populous and influential province, Christian Caryl writes in the NY Review of Books:

I can’t help feeling that the killing of Salman Taseer is a calamity for everyone who lives in the country—including the people who are now strewing flowers at the feet of the man who allegedly pulled the trigger. Those who support the takfiri worldview don’t seem to understand that this is an ideology that cedes the definition of “true Islam” to the self-declared defenders of religion—and that these definitions shift according to the political wind, to selfish agendas and narrow factional interests, rather than to the uncorrupted dictates of faith. And that means that those who consider themselves right-minded believers today can easily find themselves on the wrong end of a Kalashnikov tomorrow.

Taseer's son writes in the NY Times:

According to the authorities, my father’s stand on the blasphemy law was what drove Mr. Qadri to kill him. There are those who say my father’s death was the final nail in the coffin for a tolerant Pakistan. That Pakistan’s liberal voices will now be silenced. But we buried a heroic man, not the courage he inspired in others.

And he concludes thus:

It may sound odd, but I can’t imagine my father dying in any other way. Everything he had, he invested in Pakistan, giving livelihoods to tens of thousands, improving the economy. My father believed in our country’s potential. He lived and died for Pakistan. To honor his memory, those who share that belief in Pakistan’s future must not stay silent about injustice. We must never be afraid of our enemies. We must never let them win.

I worry that "they" are winning.  Back to Caryl:

The West, and especially the United States, should also take notice. It is time for policymakers in Washington to understand that Pakistan is not simply a vexing sideshow to the war in Afghanistan. Pakistan—populous, chaotic, and nuclear-armed—needs to be taken seriously in its own right. An imploding Pakistan promises immense pain and turmoil to itself and the world at large. Let’s hope that this realization doesn’t come too late.

"Message to Muslims: I’m Sorry"

Nicholas Kristof has a beauty on the issue of the virulent anti-Muslim hysteria in the US, and writes way more powerfully than I ever could:

I’ve seen some of the worst of Islam: theocratic mullahs oppressing people in Iran; girls kept out of school in Afghanistan in the name of religion; girls subjected to genital mutilation in Africa in the name of Islam; warlords in Yemen and Sudan who wield AK-47s and claim to be doing God’s bidding.

But I’ve also seen the exact opposite: Muslim aid workers in Afghanistan who risk their lives to educate girls; a Pakistani imam who shelters rape victims; Muslim leaders who campaign against female genital mutilation and note that it is not really an Islamic practice; Pakistani Muslims who stand up for oppressed Christians and Hindus; and above all, the innumerable Muslim aid workers in Congo, Darfur, Bangladesh and so many other parts of the world who are inspired by the Koran to risk their lives to help others. Those Muslims have helped keep me alive, and they set a standard of compassion, peacefulness and altruism that we should all emulate.

I’m sickened when I hear such gentle souls lumped in with Qaeda terrorists, and when I hear the faith they hold sacred excoriated and mocked. To them and to others smeared, I apologize.

I too.

Free speech, fanatics, and .... India :-(

I normally do not like to copy/paste entire essays, but would rather provide a link.  But, this situation qualifies for an exception.  If you read this, please make sure to pass it along.

From the Independent:

Johann Hari: Despite these riots, I stand by what I wrote
The answer to the problems of free speech is always more free speech

Last week, I wrote an article defending free speech for everyone – and in response there have been riots, death threats, and the arrest of an editor who published the article.

Here's how it happened. My column reported on a startling development at the United Nations. The UN Special Rapporteur on Human Rights has always had the job of investigating governments who forcibly take the fundamental human right to free speech from their citizens with violence. But in the past year, a coalition of religious fundamentalist states has successfully fought to change her job description. Now, she has to report on "abuses of free expression" including "defamation of religions and prophets." Instead of defending free speech, she must now oppose it.

I argued this was a symbol of how religious fundamentalists – of all stripes – have been progressively stripping away the right to freely discuss their faiths. They claim religious ideas are unique and cannot be discussed freely; instead, they must be "respected" – by which they mean unchallenged. So now, whenever anyone on the UN Human Rights Council tries to discuss the stoning of "adulterous" women, the hanging of gay people, or the marrying off of ten year old girls to grandfathers, they are silenced by the chair on the grounds these are "religious" issues, and it is "offensive" to talk about them.

This trend is not confined to the UN. It has spread deep into democratic countries. Whenever I have reported on immoral acts by religious fanatics – Catholic, Jewish, Hindu or Muslim – I am accused of "prejudice", and I am not alone. But my only "prejudice" is in favour of individuals being able to choose to live their lives, their way, without intimidation. That means choosing religion, or rejecting it, as they wish, after hearing an honest, open argument.

A religious idea is just an idea somebody had a long time ago, and claimed to have received from God. It does not have a different status to other ideas; it is not surrounded by an electric fence none of us can pass.

That's why I wrote: "All people deserve respect, but not all ideas do. I don't respect the idea that a man was born of a virgin, walked on water and rose from the dead. I don't respect the idea that we should follow a "Prophet" who at the age of 53 had sex with a nine-year old girl, and ordered the murder of whole villages of Jews because they wouldn't follow him. I don't respect the idea that the West Bank was handed to Jews by God and the Palestinians should be bombed or bullied into surrendering it. I don't respect the idea that we may have lived before as goats, and could live again as woodlice. When you demand "respect", you are demanding we lie to you. I have too much real respect for you as a human being to engage in that charade."

An Indian newspaper called The Statesman – one of the oldest and most venerable dailies in the country – thought this accorded with the rich Indian tradition of secularism, and reprinted the article. That night, four thousand Islamic fundamentalists began to riot outside their offices, calling for me, the editor, and the publisher to be arrested – or worse. They brought Central Calcutta to a standstill. A typical supporter of the riots, Abdus Subhan, said he was "prepared to lay down his life, if necessary, to protect the honour of the Prophet" and I should be sent "to hell if he chooses not to respect any religion or religious symbol? He has no liberty to vilify or blaspheme any religion or its icons on grounds of freedom of speech."

Then, two days ago, the editor and publisher were indeed arrested. They have been charged – in the world's largest democracy, with a constitution supposedly guaranteeing a right to free speech – with "deliberately acting with malicious intent to outrage religious feelings". I am told I too will be arrested if I go to Calcutta.

What should an honest defender of free speech say in this position? Every word I wrote was true. I believe the right to openly discuss religion, and follow the facts wherever they lead us, is one of the most precious on earth – especially in a democracy of a billion people riven with streaks of fanaticism from a minority of Muslims, Hindus and Sikhs. So I cannot and will not apologize.

I did not write a sectarian attack on any particular religion of the kind that could lead to a rerun of India's hellish anti-Muslim or anti-Sikh pogroms, but rather a principled critique of all religions who try to forcibly silence their critics. The right to free speech I am defending protects Muslims as much as everyone else. I passionately support their right to say anything they want – as long as I too have the right to respond.

It's worth going through the arguments put forward by the rioting fundamentalists, because they will keep recurring in the twenty-first century as secularism is assaulted again and again. They said I had upset "the harmony" of India, and it could only be restored by my arrest. But this is a lop-sided vision of "harmony". It would mean that religious fundamentalists are free to say whatever they want – and the rest of us have to shut up and agree.

The protestors said I deliberately set out to "offend" them, and I am supposed to say that, no, no offence was intended. But the honest truth is more complicated. Offending fundamentalists isn't my goal – but if it is an inevitable side-effect of defending human rights, so be it. If fanatics who believe Muslim women should be imprisoned in their homes and gay people should be killed are insulted by my arguments, I don't resile from it. Nothing worth saying is inoffensive to everyone.

You do not have a right to be ring-fenced from offence. Every day, I am offended – not least by ancient religious texts filled with hate-speech. But I am glad, because I know that the price of taking offence is that I can give it too, if that is where the facts lead me. But again, the protestors propose a lop-sided world. They do not propose to stop voicing their own heinously offensive views about women's rights or homosexuality, but we have to shut up and take it – or we are the ones being "insulting".

It's also worth going through the arguments of the Western defenders of these protestors, because they too aren't going away. Already I have had e-mails and bloggers saying I was "asking for it" by writing a "needlessly provocative" article. When there is a disagreement and one side uses violence, it is a reassuring rhetorical stance to claim both sides are in the wrong, and you take a happy position somewhere in the middle. But is this true? I wrote an article defending human rights, and stating simple facts. Fanatics want to arrest or kill me for it. Is there equivalence here?

The argument that I was "asking for it" seems a little like saying a woman wearing a short skirt is "asking" to be raped. Or, as Salman Rushdie wrote when he received far, far worse threats simply for writing a novel (and a masterpiece at that): "When Osip Mandelstam wrote his poem against Stalin, did he ‘know what he was doing' and so deserve his death? When the students filled Tiananmen Square to ask for freedom, were they not also, and knowingly, asking for the murderous repression that resulted? When Terry Waite was taken hostage, hadn't he been ‘asking for it'?" When fanatics threaten violence against people who simply use words, you should not blame the victim.

These events are also a reminder of why it is so important to try to let the oxygen of rationality into religious debates – and introduce doubt. Voltaire – one of the great anti-clericalists – said: "Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities." If you can be made to believe the absurd notion that an invisible deity dictated The Eternal Unchanging Truth to a specific person at a specific time in history and anyone who questions this is Evil, then you can easily be made to demand the death of journalists and free women and homosexuals who question that Truth. But if they have a moment of doubt – if there is a single nagging question at the back of their minds – then they are more likely to hesitate. That's why these ideas must be challenged at their core, using words and reason.

But the fundamentalists are determined not to allow those rational ideas to be heard – because at some level they know they will persuade for many people, especially children and teenagers in the slow process of being indoctrinated.

If, after all the discussion and all the facts about how contradictory and periodically vile their ‘holy' texts are, religious people still choose fanatical faith, I passionately defend their right to articulate it. Free speech is for the stupid and the wicked and the wrong – whether it is fanatics or the racist Geert Wilders – just as much as for the rational and the right. All I say is that they do not have the right to force it on other people or silence the other side. In this respect, Wilders resembles the Islamists he professes to despise: he wants to ban the Koran. Fine. Let him make his argument. He discredits himself by speaking such ugly nonsense.

The solution to the problems of free speech – that sometimes people will say terrible things – is always and irreducibly more free speech. If you don't like what a person says, argue back. Make a better case. Persuade people. The best way to discredit a bad argument is to let people hear it. I recently interviewed the pseudo-historian David Irving, and simply quoting his crazy arguments did far more harm to him than any Austrian jail sentence for Holocaust Denial.

Please do not imagine that if you defend these rioters, you are defending ordinary Muslims. If we allow fanatics to silence all questioning voices, the primary victims today will be Muslim women, Muslim gay people, and the many good and honourable Muslim men who support them. Imagine what Britain would look like now if everybody who offered dissenting thoughts about Christianity in the seventeenth century and since was intimidated into silence by the mobs and tyrants who wanted to preserve the most literalist and fanatical readings of the Bible. Imagine how women and gay people would live.

You can see this if you compare my experience to that of journalists living under religious-Islamist regimes. Because generations of British people sought to create a secular space, when I went to the police, they offered total protection. When they go to the police, they are handed over to the fanatics – or charged for their "crimes." They are people like Sayed Pervez Kambaksh, the young Afghan journalism student who was sentenced to death for downloading a report on women's rights. They are people like the staff of Zanan, one of Iran's leading reform-minded women's magazines, who have been told they will be jailed if they carry on publishing. They are people like the 27-year old Muslim blogger Abdel Rahman who has been seized, jailed and tortured in Egypt for arguing for a reformed Islam that does not enforce shariah law.

It would be a betrayal of them – and the tens of thousands of journalists like them – to apologize for what I wrote. Yes, if we speak out now, there will be turbulence and threats, and some people may get hurt. But if we fall silent – if we leave the basic human values of free speech, feminism and gay rights undefended in the face of violent religious mobs – then many, many more people will be hurt in the long term. Today, we have to use our right to criticise religion – or lose it.

via The Daily Dish